ibase_pconnect() acts very much like
ibase_connect() with two major differences.

First, when connecting, the function will first try to find a (persistent)
link that's already opened with the same parameters. If one is found, an
identifier for it will be returned instead of opening a new connection.

Second, the connection to the InterBase server will not be closed when the
execution of the script ends. Instead, the link will remain open for
future use (ibase_close() will not close links
established by ibase_pconnect()). This type of link is
therefore called 'persistent'.

Parameters

database

The database argument has to be a valid path to
database file on the server it resides on. If the server is not local,
it must be prefixed with either 'hostname:' (TCP/IP), '//hostname/'
(NetBEUI) or 'hostname@' (IPX/SPX), depending on the connection
protocol used.

username

The user name. Can be set with the
ibase.default_userphp.ini directive.

password

The password for username. Can be set with the
ibase.default_passwordphp.ini directive.

charset

charset is the default character set for a
database.

buffers

buffers is the number of database buffers to
allocate for the server-side cache. If 0 or omitted, server chooses
its own default.

dialect

dialect selects the default SQL dialect for any
statement executed within a connection, and it defaults to the highest
one supported by client libraries. Functional only with InterBase 6
and up.

User Contributed Notes 1 note

To make a connection to a firebird database with pconnect many people like to use the SYSDBA, or database owner. example:$dbConnection = ibase_pconnect('path to db','SYSDBA','masterkey');

The above is fine unless you want to login in various user that have different permissions. To use permission make roles in the database, either as the database creator (or SYSDBA) and grant the roles to the various users.

If you login with...$dbConnection = ibase_pconnect('path to db', 'USERNAME', 'userpassword');...interbase will default your user to the PUBLIC role, which is created when the database is create and usualy has select rights on tables only. To get the proper role you will need to use all the parameters, like this...$user='USERNAME';$password='userpassword';$role='MANAGER_HR';$dbConnection = ibase_pconnect('path to db', $user, $password, '', 0, 3, $role, 0);

BTW - The "path to db", is formed like this...---------------------'localhost:c:/firebird/test_db/test.fdb'---------------------

reading the interbase material, it states 3 connection methods, PHP appears to have selected the tcp type for us. So you can use localhost, or I suspect(never tested this myself) a ip address.